


The Breaking Point

by MissAnnThropic



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-08
Updated: 2016-05-08
Packaged: 2018-06-07 06:23:56
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,458
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6789976
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MissAnnThropic/pseuds/MissAnnThropic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Daniel’s ‘death’ in Meridian forces Sam Carter to reevaluate her life and what really matters to her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Breaking Point

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: Wow! I can’t believe I’m writing Stargate fanfic again! Although I have to say, that fandom was really good to me back in the day – god, how I loved these characters – and I’m delighted the Muse took up the SG-1 pen again. Although I’m sure all my old readers who knew me way back in those days are going to get whiplash when they see new SG fic from me after all these years :)
> 
> General Warning: I will not tag to your satisfaction. I think tagging is out of control, and I will not tag a fic to the point of spoiling what happens in a fic. I’m an old-school reader who believes the story should be able to surprise you. If that’s a deal-breaker for you, turn back now.
> 
> Cross-posting: I do not consent to have my fics posted to other websites (such a Goodreads).

Daniel died on a Thursday.

Technically, he ascended. And intellectually, Sam knew that. But emotionally, it was as if he had died, and she grieved him as if he had.

She didn’t remember much about Friday, to be honest. She spent it at home, living as a raw, open wound. She spent the day alone – Jacob couldn’t stay, the Tok’ra forever monopolizing his time. It was always unfair how duty stole her father from her, but it seemed especially so when Sam needed someone so desperately.

The clear moments on Friday she spent curled up in bed crying, but when her tears ran dry and she was too wrung out to weep anymore a fugue-like state set in. As if she hurt too much and her body had shut down in an act of self-preservation. It probably should have scared her how detached from reality she felt, but disengaged was better than the alternative. Being alert meant crying, it meant facing Daniel’s ‘death’, it meant accepting SG-1 was broken. In a way, she welcomed the near-catatonia of grief.

Friday was a blur of tears and numbness, and Sam knew she couldn’t take another day of that, so Saturday found her at the base in hopes of distraction. Hammond had given SG-1 two weeks of bereavement leave – because even Hammond understood SG-1 was more than a team, they were a _family_ – but Sam could _not_ stay home by herself for two weeks.

She didn’t really know what to do with herself once she was on base either, though. She had a few projects going, suspended when the Kelowna disaster happened, but they were all dangerous experiments and she didn’t feel like she could conduct them safely. She was half-dissociated half of the time, and that would be a really stupid reason to blow up the base. They had the naquadria to study, too, but even putting aside the fact that element was even more dangerous than the other projects Sam already felt unsafe to conduct, she didn’t think she could handle the material right now. Not knowing Daniel had died for it.

So Sam wandered the halls, adrift.

Everyone knew about Daniel. It was a small base. She got a lot of sympathetic looks and condolences from people she passed, but they bounced off her like an object bouncing off the Earth’s atmosphere from a too-shallow entry trajectory. There was a core of sorrow that their well-meaning platitudes couldn’t penetrate. Which was unfair, Daniel had a lot of friends on base, but he was _theirs_. SG-1’s. No one outside herself, the colonel, and Teal’c could really comprehend the loss.

Muscle memory and habit found Sam approaching Daniel’s lab. The door was open and a light was on inside.

For a moment, Sam’s heart raced with hope. Maybe. _Maybe_. He hadn’t actually _died_ , after all. Maybe he’d found a way to come back! If anyone could, it would be Daniel.

Sam rushed forward, buoyed with hope, ducked into the lab…

And froze when she found Jonas Quinn nosing around the odds and ends of Daniel’s life.

Jonas put down a piece of pottery he was examining when she barged in. “Major Carter! Hello!”

Sam just stared at him, breaths billowing. She wasn’t even sure _what_ was building inside her, but there was a storm brewing underneath her skin.

Jonas gave a contrite smile. “Sorry, I was just…” he gestured around the lab, clearly in awe, “Doctor Jackson’s work was fascinating.”

Sam stood stock-still, holding back thunder.

“Ah, actually,” Jonas prattled on, “I spoke with General Hammond about possibly joining the SGC doing something much like Doctor Jackson did. I realize I’d have a lot of catching up to do, but I’m a very quick study. He thought I might start with some of Doctor Jackson’s reading material.”

Sam’s eyes shifted to Daniel’s desk, where his framed picture of Sha’re sat.

“In fact,” Jonas shuffled his feet timidly, “he thought that since all of this valuable material is already _here_ , it would make sense for me to just…” Jonas trailed off, hand falling to his side in the middle of some vague intrusive gesture when he seemed to realize the effect his words were having.

They were going to give Jonas Daniel’s lab.

Logically, she knew it made sense. She knew they couldn’t make a mausoleum of Daniel’s lab. They couldn’t wait for him to come back (since it was possible he never would).

But the loss was still too fresh, and logic held no sway.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Jonas said with a grimace. “That was insensitive of me. My sincere apologies. I didn’t mean to be… I just…”

Jonas had no right to be there. At least let SG-1 remove Daniel’s personal effects first. The things purely _Daniel_ that had nothing to do with the work he did. Let them gently collect his heart and soul from the dusty artifacts and old tomes before some _stranger_ took his place.

Sam unlocked her clenched jaw to say just that, to read Jonas a riot act he personally did not deserve, but what was rising up from her throat was not words. It was tears. Or vomit. Either way, she couldn’t let that happen. She couldn’t let _Jonas_ see just how much damage his people had caused her. He hadn’t earned the _right_ to see her vulnerable.

Sam turned abruptly and stormed out of the lab before she fell apart. The second she stepped into the hall she ran into someone else coming from the opposite direction. They collided and Sam snapped. She shoved the person away roughly before she even registered that it was Colonel O’Neill.

Jack staggered back a step. “Hey!” he barked, as well he should for a subordinate pushing a superior officer, but the friend in him won out in that he didn’t try to stop her from walking away as fast as her legs could carry her.

She was wrong about being on base. Being at home crying was better than this. Better than seeing the Kelownan taking over Daniel’s space.

She was just rounding the corner, angling for the elevator, when she heard Jack’s scary-as-fuck voice crack behind her, “ _Get. Out_.”

***********

If Sam had been afraid more crying in bed was in her future, she was wrong. She got home and found herself pacing. She felt trapped in her own house, haunted by every memory she had of Daniel in it. She saw him in the chair in the corner, in her kitchen, in her entryway with a pizza box in hand. The times he’d been at her house were few, but she found herself cursing them because he’d left a remnant of his soul behind each time, and it was tormenting her.

She wanted to run. Go somewhere Daniel had never been with her.

Sadly, she had nowhere to go. She briefly considered calling Mark and seeing if she could go to California for a visit, but she dismissed the idea nearly as soon as she had it. He wouldn’t understand why she was so upset about a work colleague dying. He wouldn’t understand how much the world had lost when it lost Daniel.

She would have jumped on her motorcycle and cleared her head with a long ride, but the damn thing was currently lying in parts in her garage. She toyed with the idea of working on it, but she wouldn’t trust any machine she put together in her present state of mind for the same reason she wouldn’t touch a reactor right now. It would be too easy to make a deadly mistake.

So she paced, prowling her home like a caged tiger.

When she accepted she couldn’t escape Daniel’s memory, she sank into a state of intensely missing him. She felt cheated. She should have had more time with Daniel. They had a brother-sister bond that was stronger than Sam’s connection with her actual brother, and she hadn’t appreciated it enough when she had it. She thought back to every time she had put a project over spending quality time with the team, with her _friends_ , and she was bitter. Daniel had been stolen too soon, and it wasn’t _fair_.

Sam found herself standing in front of her refrigerator staring at a picture of SG-1. It was taken about a year ago, when the four of them had gone hiking at the Garden of the Gods. Teal’c wanted to go – perhaps to reassure himself that, despite the name, it was not a temple to false gods on the planet he had made his home. It was also an excuse for Teal’c to try out his new camera – a gift from Daniel (which was also why Teal’c wasn’t in the picture; he’d been the one taking it). Sam smiled remembering the copious amount of photos Teal’c had taken that day.

Then her smile slipped when she remembered the argument she’d had with Daniel.

It had been about her and Jack.

The day had been fun, although Daniel had been a little subdued, and you could not ask for nicer weather for a hike in Colorado. When Teal’c proclaimed he wanted to visit the visitor’s center (“as I am a visitor, it is meant for me”), Jack had only given him a little hell about it before they trudged in like a pack of tourists.

Teal’c made a beeline for the hats, Sam and Daniel migrated to the geological and historical section, and Jack wandered toward the toy section.

Sam wasn’t paying attention to the other guests in the visitor’s center, so how the old woman even noticed they came in as a group baffled Sam, but she and Daniel were nerding out over the educational plaques on the wall when a white-haired woman came up to Sam and placed a hand on her arm.

“May I help you?” Sam asked politely.

The woman smiled warmly up at Sam then looked toward the children’s area. “I just wanted to tell you how wonderful your husband is.”

Sam’s eyes widened and she shot a look toward the kid zone to find Jack playing with a little boy she guessed was six or seven, presumably the old woman’s grandson. Half a dozen plastic dinosaurs were spread out on a low table and the two of them were engaging in an epic t-rex battle. It was adorable, honestly, but Sam couldn’t really appreciate the sight of her CO with a child the way she usually did because the old woman had called him her _husband_.

“My son-in-law died five months ago,” the grandmother sighed, “and it’s been so hard on Nathan not to have him around. I only had girls myself, I have no idea how to relate to him or the things he likes. It’s tough on boys not to have a man in their life, I think.” The old woman patted Sam’s arm. “This is the first time Nathan’s seemed like his old self since Paul died. Never take your husband for granted, dear; you got one of the good ones.”

Sam was speechless, but Daniel was all too eager to jump in. “Yes, thank you. We’re sorry for your loss, but don’t worry.” He placed a hand on Sam’s shoulder. “Sam’s always going on about how lucky she is to have Jack.”

The old woman smiled at that, satisfied, and went back to her grandson. When she was out of earshot, Sam shrugged Daniel’s hand off and shot him a look. “Don’t do that, Daniel.”

“What?” Daniel smirked. “It’s just harmless fun.”

“No, it’s not.” Sam felt a knot in her stomach twisting tighter.

Daniel frowned.

How could he not get it? How could he not realize how hurtful it was for her to be taunted with a life she couldn’t have? “It’s cruel to joke about _that_.”

Daniel sighed. “Well, that’s because it’s stupid that it’s even an issue.”

“ _Daniel_ ,” Sam hissed.

Somehow, despite no one ever telling him, Daniel knew that Jack and Sam had feelings for each other. Sam never told him, at any rate, and she couldn’t really imagine Jack telling him. Then again, more than once she’d been blindsided by how close the colonel and Daniel actually were. They played cordial so well, but every now and then Sam would have to step back and remind herself Daniel was probably Jack’s best friend… odd as that pair seemed.

“Screw the regulations,” Daniel said point-blank.

Sam gaped at him. “I can’t believe you said that. Those regulations exist for a _reason_.”

“So maybe I don’t understand the military, but I understand _people_. And two people who feel about each other the way you and –”

Sam cut him off by grabbing his arm and hauling him into a deserted corner.

Daniel, unperturbed, gently peeled off her hand. “The way you and Jack feel about each other shouldn’t let some military construct keep you apart,” he finished calmly, as if the conversation had never been interrupted.

Sam felt betrayed. Daniel never spoke so bluntly… not about _this_. 

“What’s going on with you?” Sam asked, more apt to be worried about Daniel than mad at him. She knew her friend, and this had to be a symptom of something bigger.

Pain flashed behind Daniel’s eyes. “It was a year ago today.”

Sha’re.

 _Oh_.

“Oh, Daniel…” Sam reached out and took his hand in hers.

Daniel pursed his lips and looked Sam dead in the eye. “It’s stupid to waste time when you could be together.”

She couldn’t even deny that she wanted that… or that they both knew the colonel wanted it, too. And it was hard to justify the reasons ‘why not’ to a widower.

“It’s not that simple,” she said lowly.

“Yes, it is. He’s _right there_ ,” Daniel gestured toward Jack. Sam bit her lip. “Just _be together_. It doesn’t get simpler than that.”

Sam stared at the photograph on her fridge of the three of them in front of the towering rock formations at the Garden, looking more alien than a lot of the alien planets they had set foot on. They were all in civvies, smiling at the camera. Sam was standing between the guys, arms over both their shoulders and a hand appearing on either side of her waist as Jack and Daniel both put an arm around her.

Sam sucked in a breath when it hit her one of those men would never put his arm around her again.

And all too easily, the other one could be ripped from her, too. One lucky Jaffa with a staff weapon, one Goa’uld having a good day, one misstep in the middle of a firefight. She could lose Jack just as swiftly as she’d lost Daniel, and that reality had never crashed into her so hard as it did at that moment while Sam stood in her kitchen.

Suddenly, she understood what Daniel had meant that day. The military’s law was nothing more than manufactured, manmade doctrine pretending to hold absolute power over her life. _She_ gave it control by holding it almost sacred. It only held them back because they _let it_. They could just… _not let it_.

It _was_ that simple.

And she was not going to waste another day hiding behind fraternization regulations as though they fucking _mattered_.

She had her keys in hand and was out the door before she could really process that she’d made the decision to go to him.

***********

Sam stood on Jack O’Neill’s doorstep and felt a frightening calm for what she was about to propose they do. She didn’t even know how he would react, but she found she had nothing left in her with which to be nervous. All she had was resolve.

Daniel was right. He’d been right all along.

She shouldn’t really be surprised by that.

She blinked and looked up, jarred from her thoughts, when the door opened and suddenly Jack was standing there staring at her. Sam stared back openly, letting herself take in just how attractive he was, doing it for the first time without shame.

After almost six years looking at him from the corner of her eye, glancing away before her look became telling, it was arresting to take him in with no intention of shying. Jack O’Neill was a damn good-looking man, even more so now than when she’d first met him. He had aged with grace and grit as only an old soldier can, with nobility in his features and dignity in his presence. His scars were monuments to bravery, his character weathered by battle into a war memorial of humanity. Quite frankly, Jack was gorgeous. Sam marveled at how she’d resisted the indulgence of just _watching_ him for so long.

Sam felt alive for the first time in days. This reckless, ‘throw caution to the wind’ attitude that had overtaken her felt immense. Like a tsunami wave racing toward land. She didn’t even know she had that much passion and power in her. It _was_ stupid to fight that. Holy Hannah, had Daniel been right.

When they’d been silently watching each other for a solid twenty seconds, Jack cocked his head in question. “Carter?”

“Sir.”

Something in her face must have clued him in that something was up, because he looked too keen by half. There was battlefield acuity in his eyes as they took her in, studying her like a combat scenario.

Without a word, he stepped aside to let her in.

Sam stopped just inside his house and he closed the door behind her. “Get you a beer?”

“Sure. Thanks.”

While Jack went to his kitchen to get her a beer, Sam wandered into his living room. She drew up short when she saw the mess around his fireplace. Several of Jack’s medal cases and framed patches had been smashed, lying amid shards of glass on the floor by the stone hearth.

“Whoa,” Sam breathed as Jack appeared at her side holding out a bottle of beer. “What happened?”

“I did,” Jack said flatly, and Sam sent him a worried look that he ignored with stony resolve. For the first time since Daniel died, Sam stopped to think about how Jack was dealing with it.

Less than an hour ago she had ruminated on the fact that Daniel was Jack’s best friend. How had she not followed that thought through to its natural zenith and wonder how Jack was taking Daniel’s death? God, Daniel’s death made her selfish.

“Penny for them?” Jack asked lowly as he walked over to his couch, kicking away a piece of broken glass that had flown farther than the others before he took a seat.

“I was just thinking that I’m selfish,” Sam muttered. She looked up at him, found that too hard, and let her gaze wander. Her eyes landed on the divider between his living room and dining area and saw the framed picture of Sha’re next to a picture of Charlie. Something in Sam’s chest lurched to know he had rescued it from Daniel’s lab.

“How’s that?” Jack asked mildly, voice far too controlled for comfort.

“How are you?”

“Oh, _peachy_ ,” Jack answered sarcastically, casting a scowl toward the wreck of his mantle.

“Jack…”

The use of his name shut him up and he looked at her sharply, surprise and question in his expression.

“I’ve been so overwhelmed with how I’m doing, I never stopped to think about you.”

Jack didn’t answer right away, taking a swig of beer and balancing the bottle on his knee. “Yeah, well… loss is like that.”

“So…?”

“So?”

Sam sighed. “How are you?”

“Not interested in having this conversation,” he snapped back.

Sam winced, feeling the bite of his words when she knew better. She shouldn’t take it personally. He was hurting, too.

Jack grumbled something under his breath and gestured at the other end of the couch for her to sit. When she did, he conceded, “I’m bad at this.”

“I don’t think anyone’s _good_ at it.”

“Yeah? You cause any property damage?”

Sam looked over at the shattered glass and tried to imagine how exactly it had happened. Had it been a single sweeping arm that sent it all crashing to the ground, or did he launch each frame against the stone one at a time? Had he been screaming? Crying? Cursing Daniel’s name?

She hadn’t wrecked her house in her grief, no, but she might be about to wreck her life. How did that measure up to Jack’s path of destruction?

“Apparently I tend more toward life-altering decisions,” Sam muttered.

Jack looked at her then, worry in his eyes. “You’re not quitting the program…”

“Oh god, no,” Sam breathed shakily. “I couldn’t lose the rest of you.” The thought was unbearable.

Jack visibly relaxed. “Good. Because I wouldn’t let you go, anyway. So… if you aren’t thinking of quitting, what life-altering decisions are you contemplating?”

Sam took a steeling breath then began to gulp down her beer. Jack’s eyebrows rose incredulously as she downed half the bottle in one go.

“Carter,” he said warily when she lowered her bottle, “if you’re thinking of getting drunk, going out, and getting ‘Daniel’ tattooed on your ass, let me say right now he wouldn’t have wanted you to memorialize him like that.”

Sam laughed. It was rough and near to broken, but still it was a laugh. It said it all that Jack could get any kind of laugh out of her so soon after Daniel’s death. “No,” she noticeably paused where the ‘sir’ should have gone. The ‘sir’ she refused to say.

He noticed. With a frown, he leaned forward and put his beer down on the coffee table. Then he leaned over to take hers away. “Carter… what’s going on?” His voice had dropped to that soft timber he used so infrequently with her, and thank god, because it turned her insides to jelly.

“I was at home thinking about an argument Daniel and I had last year.”

Jack’s face twitched as he tried to decide how he was supposed to respond to that.

“He was giving me a hard time about the regs,” she said faintly.

Jack blinked and sat back an inch… still in her space, but a retreat all the same because there was no question between them which ‘regs’ she meant.

“Yeah,” Jack grunted, “he was a persistent pain in the ass about that.”

That surprised Sam. “He gave you hell about that, too?”

Jack nodded and slowly, deliberately, put her beer down next to his on the coffee table.

Sam swallowed her heart and blurted, “What if he was right?”

Jack looked quickly at her, shock in his face. He stared at her a long time, his gaze flitting between her eyes, down to her mouth, then back to her eyes, searching. “Are you serious?”

Sam sat up straighter. “Daniel _died_. But it could have been _you_. It could have been _me_. I can’t live with that.”

Jack rubbed a hand over his face. “Damnit, Sam… we can’t split up the team.” He said it like the team, or what was left of it, was all that was holding him together right now. She understood that, at least.

“I’m not suggesting we do.”

That got another sharp look from her CO. “So what _are_ you suggesting? We, what, hide it?”

“If that’s what it takes.”

Jack gaped at her like she might have actually gone crazy. “I can’t believe I’m hearing this. You know what could happen if we got caught. You could get court-martialed. Demoted. There’d be a permanent reprimand in your record that could block you from advancement for the rest of your career.”

“What about you?”

“What?”

“Why are you talking about what would happen to _me_? You’d get raked over the coals, too. It might ruin your career as much as mine.”

Jack went still and averted his gaze.

“Jack…”

Saying his name clearly had magical powers Sam would have to remember, because Jack kind of deflated and answered, “This has always been about you, Sam.”

Sam stared at him, eyes wide.

Jack reached over to steal another swallow of beer before he put the bottle down again and sat back. He finally met her eyes, and she ached at what she saw. _They_ hadn’t been keeping them apart, _she_ had.

“Oh god,” Sam gasped. “How long?”

Jack shrugged. “You probably don’t want to know how little the thought of throwing my career away bothers me.”

“ _How long_?”

Jack scowled. “This isn’t _entirely_ about you, Carter, so don’t take all the blame for this.” His eyes drifted to the family photos past Sam’s shoulder and his expression went stony. “Burying your kid puts things in perspective.”

Sam pressed a hand to her mouth, holding back a whimper of agony on his behalf (one she normally could have controlled better, but Daniel had left her so close to the edge). He wouldn’t want her pity, and she didn’t intend to make him suffer it, but sometimes Jack O’Neill broke her heart.

Jack dropped his eyes to the couch cushion between them (the only distance separating them), gathered himself, then he looked up at her. He was waiting for her. Like he always had been, she realized.

“Oh my god,” Sam dropped her hand from her face. “I thought I was going to come here and have to talk you into this.”

Jack’s mouth twitched in a half-smirk. “You might have to talk me into believing that _you_ actually want this.” He narrowed his eyes. “If I were a good person, I wouldn’t let you do this. Not now. You might not be thinking clearly so soon after…” he trailed, letting Daniel’s death linger unseen, unspoken, the ghost between them.

Sam shook her head. She’d already agonized over the choice, and she’d made her decision. She felt nothing now but reckless abandon. “I know what I want. What I’ve wanted for years, actually, but I told myself it was impossible.” She barked a sardonic laugh. “God, we were _idiots_.”

“Your career means too much to you,” Jack argued gently.

“It does mean a lot to me,” she conceded, “but not enough to give up the chance to have you.”

Jack looked wary. “Just like that?”

Sam’s expression twisted. “It wasn’t ‘just like that’, Daniel had to _die_ for me to pull my head out of my ass.”

“You realize what could happen if this goes badly.”

Sam nodded. “We’ll be crucified by the Air Force.”

“And you’re okay with that?” he asked dubiously.

Sam sagged. “No, I’m not okay with it. But I would rather be strung up by the brass than live my life not knowing what we could have been.” She would rather suffer the Air Force’s consequences for having an ‘inappropriate relationship’ with her CO than sit up the night of his funeral cursing their lost chance.

Jack’s dark eyes filled with warmth. “High hopes, Major?”

Sam smiled faintly. “We’re together in every alternate reality we’ve encountered. That has to mean we’re good together.”

That reasoning seemed to ring sour to him, his almost-smile fading. “We’re not them, Sam. We’re us.”

“And I think we’re going to be _great_ together. I think it’s worth the risk.”

That clearly restored his faith, and hope, in them. Jack’s hand reached for her, and Sam held her breath in joyous anticipation, but Jack stopped shy and frowned. “If they find out, they’ll make our lives a living hell. They’ll split up the team.”

“The team’s _already_ split up,” Sam pointed out bitterly.

“They’ll try to split _us_ up. If there’s a chance in hell they’ll succeed, then we can’t do this. I can’t risk that.”

Sam felt a dam burst inside her chest, flooding her with a sense of relief to know how much this meant to him. How much having her in his life meant. He would deal with wanting her and not having her if that was the only way to make sure she remained a part of his life. “Jack… if they break up the team and take me out of your chain of command as a punishment for what we’re about to do, all they’ll do is give us the freedom to be together openly.”

Jack looked hopefully at her. “Yeah? Because they’ll try to make us hate each other for what’s been done to our careers. They’ll want us to blame each other.” Better for them to hate each other than the Air Force would be the Air Force’s position.

“If I have to choose between this and my career, I choose this.” It had taken her years to figure it out, but she had her priorities straight now. Daniel _finally_ got through to her.

Jack eyed her closely, probably searching for any hint of doubt. He had every right to… because if they did this, there was no coming back from it. They couldn’t unring this bell. To say they were choosing each other over the careers they had each worked so hard for was not to be taken lightly.

Sam tipped her chin up in blazing disobedience to the conduct code she had lived by for so long. _Someone else’s_ conduct code, but no longer hers. She would live by her own. “I’ve sacrificed enough for this program, this _world_. I _deserve_ this.” She wasn’t asking for fortune or fame for her sacrifices in the name of saving the planet, she just wanted this. _Him_. It didn’t seem like an extraordinary request.

“No argument from me. And even _if_ … they wouldn’t kick you out of the program entirely. You’re too valuable. The worst they’ll do is reassign you to the science department. _Me_ they might just toss out on my ass. I’m just a soldier, we’re a dime a dozen.”

She would argue he was far more valuable than that, but it wasn’t really the point. “And are you okay with that?”

His expression gentled. “Have been for years, Sam.”

Sam felt tears burning in her eyes. She blamed her raw emotions of late. “We really were idiots, weren’t we?”

Jack shook his head. “You weren’t ready to risk everything, and I didn’t blame you. You always had more to lose than I did.” There was a look in his eye then that Sam had seen before. A look that said Jack felt like he was already living on days he hadn’t been meant to have. Daniel used to get a very somber, sagacious look in his eye when Jack’s face got like that. It chilled Sam to the core, and she was sure she didn’t want to know what it meant.

Instead, Sam blurted, “I love you.”

Jack looked like he’d been knocked flat on his back, but he tried to hold his ground with humor. “We haven’t even _done_ anything yet. We _could_ be bad together, you know. Might want to save that for when you can mean it,” he teased.

Sam shook her head. “It doesn’t matter if the sex is terrible. I already love you.”

Then there was a palpable tension between them, because it had been spoken aloud. They were talking about having sex. The regs were well and truly on their way to irrevocably shattered, much like the medal cases on Jack’s floor.

“Well, since the pressure’s off,” Jack joked dryly and shifted closer to her. He crowded into her space and Sam could smell him, that musk of man and gun oil and the outdoors and kevlar and Jack. Something long-dormant in her was waking up, shining bright for the first time in her life. It felt like destiny, fate, and forever colliding, cracking her world wide open and spilling forth her wildest dreams. It felt like stepping through the Stargate for the first time.

Jack could take her apart on a molecular level and put her back together just by being near her. How had it taken her so long to realize _that_ was worth any professional risk?

Jack leaned closer and touched her face softly with one hand. “I love you, too.”

Sam smiled shakily, her heart fit to burst. “Wait until you can mean it,” she teased back.

“I did.”

Sam leaned in and kissed him.

Even though they’d been talking about it, Sam could still sense Jack’s eyebrows twitch toward his hairline, the way they always did when someone kissed him. Like he was surprised every time that someone would want to kiss him.

Then he was kissing her back. 

In the words of a great man, ‘screw the regulations’.

Somewhere out there, Daniel lived on as a being of energy and light.

And Sam hoped someday she would get the chance to thank him.


End file.
